Many Happy Returns: Paris Flea Market Is 100

A 1900 vintage flying horse for $625. Used shirts at $1.25. A century-old barber`s chair. A life-size marble statue of a woman for $17,000.

Welcome to Paris` Flea Market, the mecca of bric-a-brac, more than 50 acres of stalls selling treasures and junk.

The Marche aux Puces was established about 1885 for selling goods principally scavenged from trash cans. This summer the merchants of the flea market are celebrating its 100th anniversary.

``It`s Paris` second most famous site after the Eiffel Tower,`` claimed blue-jeans hawker Daniel Lavigny.

The market, on the northern edge of Paris in the drab suburb of St. Ouen, is open Saturday, Sunday and Monday and draws 150,000 to 200,000 visitors weekly, many of them tourists from around the world.

From the early years come legends of lucky shoppers discovering grimy paintings by Van Gogh, Renoir and Cezanne and buying them for a pittance.

Today the market has grown and evolved. More than 2,000 sellers offer everything from new fake leather jackets to beautifully restored period furniture.

``There are some great antiques here, and some of them are very, very expensive,`` said Claude David, a retired St. Ouen planning official who helped organize anniversary festivities.

Antiques dealer Louis Montalenti sells walnut furniture from King Louis Philippe`s 1830-1848 reign. Montalenti has a permanent stand within the Vernaison section of the market. Vernaison is one of a half-dozen organized markets within the Marche aux Puces. Each has its own specialities, rules and reputation.

Joseph Cohen, 76, sells from a temporary stand on a sidewalk near the Porte de Clignancourt subway stop. But he enjoys the life, selling incense, necklaces and perfume in Eiffel Tower-shaped bottles.

A 46-year veteran of the market, Cohen said, ``It`s much bigger and less typical now than it was back then.``

Historians say it is impossible to put an exact date on the flea market`s founding, but a milepost was an 1884 decree by Paris prefects that rubbish should cease to be dumped onto streets and should be placed instead in metal containers with lids.

The law dealt a blow to thousands of rag pickers and junkmen who made their living combing through the refuse. They rebelled.

The authorities gave in, and the junkmen were permitted to go through the rubbish as long as they did so outside the city. The most popular spot became St. Ouen, near an army barracks, and in 1885 the town council set about trying to regulate the new commerce.

``They were selling old beds and mattresses that might have had fleas in them; so it became known as the flea market,`` said Robert Waitzman, w